


love is a four letter word that should never be heard

by reogulus



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: Dirty Talk, F/M, Face-Sitting, Jealousy, Pre-Canon, Quickies, Resentment, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:08:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26280916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/pseuds/reogulus
Summary: She’s tried other ways of getting close to him, god knows she’s tried over the years—but none gets her closer than this does. Acceptance is the first step towards enjoyment and enlightenment.
Relationships: Charity Le Domas/Daniel Le Domas
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	love is a four letter word that should never be heard

“You’re up early,” Daniel speaks from behind Charity with a hoarse, sleep-thickened voice. She is sitting in front of the dresser in her silk robe, her face fresh and perfectly painted—her make-up appointment wrapped up only ten minutes ago. Her dress is dry cleaned and hanged immaculately in the closet, next to the ensemble of brown tuxedo and satin green shirt that she picked out for Daniel, to match his eyes and hers. Her jewelry has been picked out long ago, now arranged neatly in a row on her dresser.

“We have to be on our way in forty minutes.”

She doesn’t turn to face Daniel as she says this, her tone laden with accusation. She speaks to him via the reflection in her dresser’s mirror, where she sees Daniel rolling over under the sheets, props himself up against the headboard. The sheets slip down with his movement and reveals a generous expanse of his chest.

“Right. No harm no foul if we’re a little late, no? Emilie and Fitch will be the last to arrive, one way or another.”

Charity turns back to face him, then, to give him a good showing of her disdain. “You’re not even trying, are you?”

Daniel runs a hand through his hair—that sweaty, matted mess. She wouldn’t put it past him to skip on showering, just to spite her. “It’s my brother’s wedding day, not mine. I think I can hang back and relax.”

“Right, ‘my brother will do it,’” she parrots him in a high-octave voice, bright and chirpy like a vapid valley girl. “I’m just going to remind you again that your actions reflect poorly on _me_ , in front of Tony and Becky—at least one of us still has to care about their opinions of us, before it’s too late to change the wills.”

“Right, well,” Daniel smirks, turns aside to reach for the bottle of water on the nightstand. He makes no effort to get off the bed or get ready to face the day. “You do have all the brains in this marriage, dear.”

Charity grits her teeth. God, she hates it when he calls her that.

“I only feel sorry for Alex. You know just as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time before you let him down.”

Daniel laughs. It’s a loud, ugly snort that will only grow more obnoxious from here, as he gets increasingly inebriated through the day.

“Oh, yes, so glad you brought him up,” he takes a swig of water to punctuate the pause, “did you enjoy playing big sister with a bleeding heart to Alex last week, have a little heart-to-heart with just the two of you?”

A look of surprise flashes across Charity’s face—she can tell from the smug look on Daniel’s face that she hasn’t hidden it well enough. Her head feels hot with annoyance.

“Fuck you, Daniel, I’m not the asshole for taking your brother out to brunch and try to help him recover from the hangover that _you_ caused,” says Charity as she saunters over to the bed, to stand next to Daniel. She waits a moment, for him to respond, or to look at her. He does neither; his thin lips are still fixed in the shape of that smirk.

She fists her well-manicured fingers in his hair, then she pulls—not hard enough to _hurt_ hurt, but enough to extract a soft gasp from his lips. Charity smiles with satisfaction as she looks into those wide, doe-like hazel eyes looking up at her.

“Tell me, are you jealous that your brother seems to like your wife, or that your wife seems to like your brother?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Charity notices Daniel’s thighs stirring under the covers for just a second before going still. She knows he’s naked underneath, of course; their marriage lack in a lot of things, as they have been made well-aware by many counsellors and therapists, but sex is not one of them. Even now, standing next to the bed, she can smell last night’s sex, the scent lingering on the bedsheets, the pillows, her husband’s body. She feels her pulse quicken.

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer, Charity,” he offers her nothing short of insolence in response. “But if you were to fuck Alex, I think I’d feel worse for Grace than for myself.”

“You can put your smart mouth to a better use,” she says as she drags her nails across his scalp, hard enough to make sure he can feel the scratch. And then she lets her robe fall open, climbs back into bed and puts one leg over to straddle Daniel’s chest, before he can make another sound.

The thing is, Charity prefers him like this, truly. More bark, less bite; not soft, but pliant. There was a time earlier in their marriage when he put up more of a fight to wrestle her for dominance, before she was made regional senior vice president, and after Daniel was kicked off the board of the holding company. Nowadays, he still does the dance with her, but it is no longer a debatable question who will come out on top. She’ll take better care of him afterwards, anyway.

They are beasts locked in the cage of perfectly aligned self-interests, of a symbiosis that is slowly poisoning them both. That’s a lesson about marriage that mothers often fail to teach their daughters.

Sometimes Charity thinks about how their lives would have turned out, had she drawn that card, the bad card, on her wedding night. She would have been ready for it—she’d been accustomed to carrying a gun with her everywhere, a relic of the neighborhoods where she grew up and raised herself. She would have taken Daniel out—and made him a martyr the way he would have wanted it. That would have been the happy ending they both deserved.

But instead, they have this.

Charity braces one arm against the headboard, her other hand reaches down and pushes her underwear aside. It’s her favorite thong in a delicate patchwork of lace and modal, the fabric smooth and soft against her well-groomed sex. She’s planned for every detail to be perfect, from inside out—but Daniel is always the externality she cannot account for.

But he knows how to use his mouth on her better than any partner she’s ever had. That’s the function of a committed monogamous relationship—you work with it and you don’t just walk out. Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, but it’s as close as you can get with the cost-benefit analysis that must be run with every decision.

She sighs with relief when Daniel assumes his position under her, pushes himself further down towards the foot of the bed so his nose gets close enough to her that she can feel his breath hovering near her clit. It sends a shudder through her torso, as she focuses on keeping her thighs and knees stable. The familiar tickle of his barely-kempt beard against the soft skin of her inner thighs is a signal that Charity has grown to associate with the assumption of control. She can feel herself growing wet with anticipation before Daniel even puts his tongue on her.

He catches the lace of her thong between his teeth before he speaks again: “So we’re fine with being fashionably late?”

“Shut up,” Charity lifts her hips higher to jerk the fabric loose from his mouth, and peers down to get a good look of Daniel’s flushed face—his eyes are still bloodshot, his parted lips growing even redder. It’s only like this that she can keep his full attention for more than five minutes.

Charity feels her breath getting hitched in her throat. Whatever that feeling is, she is good at shutting it down before it chokes her out.

“We still need to get you cleaned up after this, your filth and all,” her voice remains even, like she’s just instructing the house staff to run another errand. Then she spreads her knees wider and bears down on his open mouth.

The contact extracts a breathy moan from Daniel, still, no matter how many times they’ve done this. When they were younger he was even needier, couldn’t manage to keep his hands to himself even when she told him time and time again that she doesn’t like to have his hands on her when she fucks his face. Now that they have gained a much better understanding of each other, he knows exactly what and how much she needs, and he refuses to measure out even an ounce more than the line she’s drawn.

Of course, he’s still a slut for it; Charity reaches one hand behind her and squeezes his cock under the thin sheet, finds with renewed satisfaction that he is definitely half-hard. Daniel responds by licking into her, up and down the length of her opening, the noises wet and obscene where his spit meets her slick.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Charity curses, as the heat and suction move up to envelop her clit. Daniel works at her slowly, still keeping it hands-free, pressing the flat of his tongue exactly where Charity expects it to be as she starts to move herself back and forth. Eyes screwed shut, she tosses her head back and sees floating lights behind her eyelids. Daniel keeps steady as he goes, his lips closed around her clit as she spreads her labia wider with two fingers. She’s so wet that she must be overflowing—her arousal dripping into his mouth, down his chin, wetting his beard.

She’s tried other ways of getting close to him, god knows she’s tried over the years—but none gets her closer than this does. Acceptance is the first step towards enjoyment and enlightenment.

Charity feels the sheets rustle with other movements behind and under her ass, beyond the tail of her robe splayed out on Daniel’s chest. She keeps her eyes closed, still—she doesn’t need to look to know that he’s stroking his cock. She fists a hand in Daniel’s hair again to pull him up and closer to the center of her heat, a reminder for him to focus. He lets out a gasp before reaching deeper into Charity as she wishes.

“Hurry up,” she starts riding him harder now, her body keeps the time effortlessly via muscle memory. He’s panting more desperately, struggling to catch his breath as he licks and sucks and pushes his tongue in and out of her.

This is the one thing he still tries to do well enough to match her expectations. Charity is not a greedy woman; for that, she’s always been thankful.

Her climax topples her over as her calves shake uncontrollably, bracketed Daniel’s bare shoulders. She’s soaked through her thong, the gap where the pillow meets the bedsheet, but most of all, Daniel. His forehead glistens with his own sweat and his chin shines with her come.

This is as close to peace as they will ever know, she thinks.

Charity climbs off the bed, fastens her robe again. She notices that Daniel’s erection is still making a tent under the sheet—he didn’t come when she did.

“Take care of that in the shower,” Charity only nods at it, expressionless. Then she walks back to the dresser, checking herself in the mirror again, just to confirm that her hair and make-up remain as they were.

Daniel scoffs behind her, with what sounds like a weak, indignant laugh. From the reflection in the mirror, she sees him walking into the bathroom, his erection hangs heavy between his thighs and his ass flushes red from friction against the sheets. Her husband looks like a mess of a whore, but luckily, it’s a look that he wears well.

Charity nods to herself in the mirror as affirmation of her own assessment. And then, starting with the left earring, she starts to don her jewelry to the sounds of the shower running. She will do Daniel’s bowtie when he comes out and gets dressed. They will not be late for meeting Daniel’s parents at the castle.


End file.
